3PO-Labs: Alexa, Echo and Voice Interface

So, some exciting news from Amazon today - the first batch of skills with push notifications enabled from the private beta have finally been released. Unfortunately, in their official post Amazon called out several skills as exemplars of the new feature, but failed to mention that we at 3PO-Labs were also in the beta, and also have a live skill with notifications: AstroBot. In fact, due to a clerical error with certification a couple months ago, we were actually the very first third-party skill to go live with notifications. We've been incognito ever since, but we're relieved to finally be able to talk about what we've done...

Hi everyone. We at 3PO-Labs have made no secret of our frustrations around testing the Alexa voice/intent model. Around this time last year I started playing around with a sloppy hack to address the problem. I've fiddled with it off and on during that time, but a recent renewal of interest in the problem has pushed things to a point where I can start to peel back the covers on what I've built.

Welcome to a new column at 3PO-Labs, which we're (for now) calling VUXcellence. The idea behind this series is to shine a light on interesting aspects of voice UX that different developers are utilizing that make their voice interfaces more intuitive, efficient, or natural. First up, we're gonna take a look at TsaTsaTzu's massive RPG "Six Swords".

One question we see come up fairly often among Alexa user groups is whether it's possible to download the clips you sent to your own devices, which are accessible from the companion apps. It is! And it's actually pretty easy to do. In this tutorial, we'll walk you through the steps required.

A surprise announcement to kick off the week has sent shockwaves through the Alexa Skill developer community - Amazon has initiated a revenue sharing program by which developers of game skills that meet certain criteria can be compensated based on how active their users were during a given month. This is a game-changing (pun 100% intended) addition, and it's sure to reshape the development landscape...

Amazon ​recently released a new feature that allows for beta testing skills. That's something we (and a lot of other developers) have been requesting for almost a year, and I'm sure we'll have plenty to say about it going forward. Today, though, we wanted to call out one cool side effect: it's now much easier to get ASK Responder configured to play with...

The Alexa team has been busy since our last post, with a series of announcements and changes that are sending waves across the development community. We wanted to take a minute to throw out some hot takes about what we've seen.